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For the most part, jQuery is more than adequate and it has a large number of plugins that get the job done and do it well. However, in terms of certain elements, like select lists and tables, there is much to be desired.
I currently have a select list plugin that is capable of performing the majority of the tasks I need, but this post is more about tables and manipulating them. There are a number of table enhancing plugins, however, none of them, that I'm aware of, allows you to perform simple table manipulations, such as adding a row and cells. To keep it simple, here's one of my current projects:
Using jQuery, I'm making an AJAX call to a script that communicates with another server, pulls information, processes it, and returns the results, which are displayed on the screen. In the case of this project, I'm displaying the information in a table, which is hidden and then made visible. Since there is a lot of data to process, I'm doing it in chunks, so that I get no timeouts on the PHP side. So every few seconds, I could have 0 to 100 (or more) results I need to place into a table, and then I move on to the second call, and the third, etc.
Before, I was having my PHP print out the table row and cell structure and all I'd have to do is append this data. However, this does not work in Internet Explorer. So I had to resort to having my data collected and then processed by the javascript and properly insert rows and cells. I don't have a problem writing this up (I have a small script already put together that accomplishes this). The main reason for me going into this is to see if anyone has come across a jQuery plugin that already performs these simple tasks. If not, I'm considering writing my own for distribution. It really wouldn't be much, but I think it could be useful for situations like this, where you're not sorting a table, you're not striping it, you simply need controls to add/remove from it without creating your own elements.
If I proceed with making my own plugin for outside use, I'd like to have some people test it out, when it's ready of course.
Any comments?